What Is a Bidet – And Why Doesn't a German Bathroom Have One?
In Short
A bidet is a basin for washing yourself with water instead of wiping with paper. In Italy, France, and Portugal, nearly every bathroom has one. In Germany it disappeared – for reasons of space, not conviction. The function comes in four designs today, and three of them need no basin of their own.
What We've Been Sold as Normal
That a second basin next to the toilet is a French thing, something for large bathrooms and other countries. In fact the German version is the exception: in Italy, a bidet has been required in homes since 1975. We left it out and turned that into a matter of taste.
The Honest Explanation
All four designs do the same thing: they direct water at a place you would otherwise rub dry. They differ only in how much bathroom they need for it.
The classic bidet is a ceramic basin of its own with its own plumbing, roughly 70 by 40 centimeters, usually beside the toilet. You sit on it. That is the design the name belongs to – and the one that no longer fits into a standard German bathroom.
The shower toilet is a toilet with a built-in nozzle. One piece of ceramic instead of two, but with machinery inside and a price that belongs to a bathroom renovation rather than a shopping trip.
The bidet seat sits between the ceramic and the toilet seat. The nozzle swings in when needed, and the water comes from the angle valve the tank is already attached to. No new pipe, no new ceramic.
The portable butt shower is a bottle with a nozzle that you fill yourself. It needs nothing at all – no valve, no hose, no fixed toilet.
Why it vanished here: German bathrooms got smaller after the war, and a bidet costs a square meter. Where space is tight, the basin you consider dispensable is the one that goes. The water was never the problem; the second basin was. That is exactly why the three retrofit designs exist.
What You Often Hear – and What's True
“A bidet is for washing your feet.”
It works, and people do it. It was built for intimate areas.
“Sitting in a basin is unhygienic.”
You touch the rim, the way you do with a sink. With a seat or the portable version you touch nothing at all.
“Paper is enough, surely.”
Paper spreads and rubs. Water dissolves and carries away. That is not a matter of taste but the difference between wiping dry and washing.
“A bidet is a luxury.”
The classic basin, perhaps. The portable version costs €19.90.
Putting It in Context
A bidet is not a purchase for large bathrooms but a function Germany sacrificed to floor space. Anyone who wants it today needs no second basin – only a decision between a bottle and a seat.
